THE GENEVA DECLARATION
ON TERRORISMUN General Assembly Doc. A/42/307, 29 May 1987,
Annex

Geneva, 21 March 1987

PREAMBLE

The peoples of the
world are engaged in a fundamental series of struggles for a just and
peaceful world based on fundamental rights now acknowledged as sacred in a
series of widely endorsed international legal conventions.

These struggles are
opposed in a variety of cruel and brutal ways by the political, economic and
ideological forces associated with the main structures of domination present
in the world that spread terrorism in a manner unknown in prior
international experience. Although these struggles are global in scale,
there are certain arenas that require particular attention and urgent action
at this time. We mention in this regard the central struggle in Southern
Africa against the apartheid system, the criminal regime and policies that
sustain this system, and engage in military interventions throughout the
region spreading terrorism beyond the immediate battle grounds of South
Africa and Namibia; we mention the ongoing struggle of the Palestinian
people for their homeland in the face of Israeli and United States military
and paramilitary policies throughout the entire eastern Mediterranean region
bringing special hardships and anguish to the people of Lebanon; and we
mention the struggles in Central America against reactionary forces in and
out of governmental control that are being organized and orchestrated by the
United States through the special instrumentality of the CIA.

Against this background of torment and struggle, the debate about
international terrorism is waged, being manipulated in the media and
elsewhere by forces of domination; the public is encouraged to associate
terrorism exclusively with those victims of this system. We seek to make
clear that terrorism is overwhelmingly an expression of these structures of
domination and only very derivatively of the struggles that arise in
legitimate resistance.

Let us understand that the distinguishing feature of terrorism is fear and
that this fear is stimulated by threats of indiscriminate and horrifying
forms of violence directed against ordinary people everywhere. The most
flagrant type of international terrorism consists of preparations to wage
nuclear war, especially to extend nuclearism to outer space and to work
feverishly for the presence of first-strike weaponry. Terrorism involves the
prospects of holocausts unleashed by state power against the peoples of the
world.

The terrorism of
modern state power and its high technology weaponry exceeds qualitatively by
many orders of magnitude the political violence relied upon by groups
aspiring to undo oppression and achieve liberation.

Let us also be clear,
we favour non-violent resistance wherever possible and we praise those long
efforts by the liberation movement in South Africa and elsewhere to avoid
violence in their pursuit of justice. We condemn all those tactics and
methods of struggle that inflict violence directly upon innocent civilians
as such. We want no part of any form of terrorism but we must insist that
terrorism originates with nuclearism, criminal regimes, crimes of state,
high-technology attacks on Third World peoples, and systematic denials of
human rights. It is a cruel extension of the terrorist scourge to taunt the
struggles against terrorism with the label "terrorism". We support these
struggles and call for the liberation of political language along with the
liberation of peoples.

Terrorism originates
from the statist system of structural violence and domination that denies
the right of self-determination to peoples (e.g., in Namibia, Palestine,
South Africa, the Western Sahara); that inflicts a gross and consistent
pattern of violations of fundamental human rights upon its own citizens
(e.g., in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, South Africa); or that perpetrates
military aggression and overt or covert intervention directed against the
territorial integrity or political independence of other states (e.g.,
Afghanistan, Angola, Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, Mozambique, Nicaragua).

I. STATE TERRORISM

In particular, state terrorism manifests itself in:

1) police state practices against its own people to dominate through fear
by surveillance, disruption of group meetings, control of the news media,
beatings, torture, false and mass arrests, false charges and rumors, show
trials, killings, summary executions and capital punishment;

2) the introduction or transportation of nuclear weapons by a state
into or through the territory or territorial waters of other states or
into international waters;

3) military exercise maneuvers or war games conducted by one state in
the vicinity of another state for the purpose of threatening the political
independence or territorial integrity of that other state (e.g., in Honduras,
in Korea, in the Gulf of Sirte);

4) the armed attack by the military forces of a state on targets that
put at risk the civilian population residing in another state (e.g., the
bombings of Benghazi, Tripoli and Tunis, Druze villages in Lebanon and
Kurdish villages);

5) the creation and support of armed mercenary forces by a state for
the purpose of subverting the sovereignty of another state (e.g., against
Nicaragua);

6) assassinations, assassination attempts, and plots directed by a state
towards the officials of other states, or national liberation movements,
whether carried out by military strike, special forces units or covert
operations by "intelligence forces" or their third party agents
(e.g., the CIA against Nicaraguan politicians, the Qadhafi family, Yasser
Arafat);

7) covert operations by the "intelligence" or other forces
of a state which are intended to destabilize or subvert another state,
national liberation movements, or the international peace movement (e.g.,
the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior);

8) disinformation campaigns by a state, whether intended to destabilize
another state or to build public support for economic, political or military
force or intimidation directed against another state;

9) arms sales which support the continuation of regional wars and retard
the search for political solutions to international disputes;

10) the abrogation of civil rights, civil liberties, constitutional
protections and the rule of law under the pretext of alleged counter-terrorism;
and

11) the development, testing and deployment of nuclear and space-weapons
systems that in all circumstances increase the probability of genocide
and ecocide, while condemning the poor to continued misery and all humanity
to a state of perennial fear.

It follows that the most dangerous and detrimental form of state terrorism
in the world today is that practiced by the nuclear weapons states against
the rest of the international community, which is euphemistically called
nuclear deterrence. This system of nuclear terrorism actually constitutes
ongoing international criminal activity -- namely, the planning, preparation
and conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, crimes against humanity,
war crimes, genocide and grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions
of 1949. Hence those government decision-makers in the nuclear weapons
states with command responsibility for their nuclear weapons establishments
are today subject to personal criminal responsibility and punishment under
the Nuremberg Principles for the nuclear terrorism they daily inflict upon
all states and peoples of the world community.

That being said, we nevertheless welcome the constructive proposals
put forth by the Soviet government to achieve genuine nuclear arms control
and reduction agreements with respect to space weapons, strategic nuclear
weapons and intermediate nuclear forces. We regret that the United States
government has failed to respond to these promising initiatives, but has
instead exacerbated the nuclear arms race by pursuing its so-called Strategic
Defense Initiative.

II. NATIONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENTS

As repeatedly recognized by the United Nations General Assembly, peoples
who are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against
racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination have
the right to use force to accomplish their objectives within the framework
of international humanitarian law. Such lawful uses of force must not be
confused with acts of international terrorism. Thus, it would be legally
impermissible to treat members of national liberation movements in the
Caribbean Basin, Central America, Namibia, Northern Ireland, the Pacific
Islands, Palestine, and South Africa, among others, as if they were common
criminals. Rather, national liberation fighters should be treated as combatants
subject to the laws and customs of warfare and to the international laws
of humanitarian armed conflict as evidenced, for example, by the 1907 Hague
Regulations, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and their Additional
Protocol I of 1977. Hence, national liberation fighters would be held to
the same standards of belligerent conduct that are applicable to soldiers
fighting in an international armed conflict. Thus, when a liberation fighter
is captured by a belligerent state, he should not be tried as a criminal,
but would be treated as a prisoner of war. He could be interned for the
duration of the conflict, or released upon condition of a pledge to refrain
from further participation in hostilities, or traded in a prisoner of war
exchange. In the event such a national liberation fighter is found in a
neutral state, he should not be subjected to extradition to the belligerent
state.

In the spirit of Geneva Protocol I, just as is true for soldiers in regular
armed forces, when a national liberation fighter is captured after directly
attacking innocent civilians as such, he would still be treated as a prisoner
of war, but would be subject to prosecution for the commission of war crimes
before an impartial international tribunal, preferably in a neutral state
or by an international court. And, to the extent that the concerned belligerent
states refuse to treat national liberation fighters analogously to soldiers
for political reasons or propaganda purposes, they must assume a considerable
amount of direct responsibility for whatever violence that is inflicted
upon their civilian populations by national liberation fighters.

Nevertheless, we wish to emphasize that the overwhelming majority of
violations of the laws and customs of warfare have been and are still being
committed by the regular, irregular, para-military and covert forces of
states, not by national liberation fighters. The Western news media have
purposely distorted and perverted this numerical relationship in order
to perpetrate the cult of counter-terrorism for their governments' own
militaristic and terrorist purposes.

III. NON-INTERNATIONAL ARMED CONFLICTS

With respect to those situations where sub-national groups or organizations
use force against the apparatus of the state but nevertheless do not represent
national liberation movements, we affirm the applicability of common article
3 to the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocol
II of 1977 to these non-international armed conflicts. In particular, the
fundamental distinction between combatants and non-combatants must be maintained
at all times and under all circumstances.

IV. THE ROLE OF THE INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

The international media also play a direct role in international terrorism
when they uncritically disseminate disinformation from "official sources"
that creates public support for the use of deadly force or other forms
of economic and political violence against another state. The international
media also play an indirect role in terrorism through a pattern of selective
definition and coverage. The media specifically ignores or understates
institutional forms of terrorism, preserving the term instead for national
liberation movements and their supporters. In such ways the media become
agents of ideological control, advancing an inverted standard of terrorism.

V. CONCLUSION

The principles of the United Nations Charter -- if applied in all of-their
ramifications -- constitute an effective instrument for reshaping the actual
policies of power and hegemony among sovereign states into those of mutual
respect. Conversely, the real international terrorism is founded in the
imposition of the will of the powerful states upon the weak by means of
economic, political, cultural and military domination. We declare that
the key to ending all forms of terrorism is the development of new relations among nations
and peoples based on unfailing respect for the right to self-determination
of peoples, and on a greater measure of economic, political and social
equality on a world scale.